Only when he was confident of his present surroundings did he move slowly and quietly across the hall. One hand clutched his dagger, the other lifted the door latch to the living quarters. He opened it, and sucked fiercely in through his teeth.
It was a shambles, overturned tables, chairs and stools, scattered ewers and urns, tapestries torn from the walls, couches and cushions slashed, the stuffing ripped out and lamps broken, leaving an overpowering smell of oil in the room. But the shambles he only vaguely registered. It was a young boy of about fourteen years of age that caught his attention. The boy’s face was white, his eyes glared, his hair tousled, and both hands were grasping a raised short sword that was clearly too heavy for him.
‘One more step, I warn you,’ he growled but Vivius could see the fear behind the threat.
Unhurriedly, Vivius returned his dagger to the sheath in his tunic making sure the boy saw every precise movement.
The boy’s eyes wavered, unsure. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Senator Vivius Marcianus, and I’m here to see Centurion Fabius Salonianus.’ Vivius raised his hands hoping the boy would understand the gesture.
The boy studied him seriously for a moment before his gaze dropped to Vivius’s toga peeping through his cloak. As it drifted up to his face again, the boy’s eyes widened.
‘You’re a senator?’
‘Yes.’ Vivius was relieved to see the short sword lowering. He wasn’t worried about being attacked; he could easily have overcome the lad, but he had no wish to harm him.
‘Father said someone would come,’ he whispered. ‘He said the emperor would send someone of importance.’ He swallowed hard and even though he was trembling, Vivius was impressed by the way he lowered his sword and stood to attention like a Roman legionary. ‘Forgive me, Senator. My name is Maximus Remus Salonianus.’
Vivius spread his hands. ‘What’s happened here? Where’s your father?’
Maximus cleared his throat. ‘My…my father…he’s dead.’
Vivius found his heart sinking into his boots. ‘When?’
‘Last night. I found him in…in a ditch this morning.’ The boy’s lip quivered. ‘He’d been beaten then…stabbed…in the back.’
Vivius nodded, his methodical brain ticking over ways he could turn this tragic event to his advantage. He watched a middle-aged dumpling of a woman, eyes red and puffy, a sleeveless gown thrown over a course dark green dress, and a linen scarf around her head enter cautiously from the garden. Vivius could see the fear in her eyes.
A little girl, Vivius judged her to be around seven or eight years of age, clung to her mother’s dress. A tangled mass of brown hair covered her shoulders, her feet were bare, dress buttons undone and her face was streaked from crying. She stared solemnly up at him, then to his dismay, her lower lip quivered, her face crumpled and with a wail she buried her face into her mother’s dress.
Vivius wasn’t overly fond of children, simply because he didn’t know any. But he was disarmed to have this effect on one. Uncomfortably he turned to the boy.
‘Mother, this is a senator from Rome.’
‘A…a senator?’ The woman ran her hands nervously down her gown. ‘Forgive us, Senator. You…you gave us a fright, especially after… Please, won’t you sit…’ She spread her podgy hands in despair at her ruined chairs.
Vivius gestured to the open doors. ‘I think it’s warm enough to sit outside, don’t you?’ he said in the hope he could escape from the foul smell of oil.
‘Yes, yes of course. Forgive my manners; I don’t know what I’m thinking… Sophia, bring us drinks,’ she called. The flustered woman led him into a small family garden at the back of the house with a swing, budding flowers, bushes and an array of blue and white hyacinths emitting a more fragrant scent than was in the house. Beyond the garden stood a field of vegetables in various stages of growth. Vivius sat down on a wobbly homemade wooden stool at the side of a marble table.
A girl of around twelve arrived with a tray of drinks which shook as she carried them through from the house. Like her siblings, her feet were bare, hair unkempt and her face was tear stained.
‘You must excuse us, Senator.’ The woman poured a pale liquid into three beakers. ‘As you can see, you have arrived in the middle of a crisis.’
‘What happened?’ Vivius asked injecting a sympathetic note into his question.
It was Maximus who answered. ‘The upset in the house; that happened early this morning while I was with the Vigils. My fa…father…that happened last night,’ he said joining them at the table. He swallowed hard. ‘My mother and sisters…’
The woman put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Maximus feels guilty for not being here, Senator. But in truth I’m glad he wasn’t. Two men broke in early this morning while Maximus was talking to the Vigils. Our intruders demanded to know if Fabius had a copy of—the letter he had written to the emperor.’ She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I…I pleaded ignorance. I thought it might be safer. That was when they tore the house to pieces. We huddled in the corner, the girls and me, listening to them cursing and swearing as they broke up our home. Then they left. They didn’t harm us and they didn’t take anything but that was why Maximus greeted you with a sword, Senator. He thought they’d returned.’ The woman shook her head. ‘It was a frightening experience.’ She wiped her nose on the corner of her pinafore. ‘Maximus arrived back with the Vigils a few hours later with the news that…’ Her hand flew to her mouth to contain her sob.
‘But they didn’t get what they were looking for,’ Maximus interjected. ‘That’s why you’re here isn’t it senator; you want to know about the letter?’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m here. What do you know about it?’
‘Everything. The information in the letter should be in my father’s journals. I can give you them if you want?’
Vivius was startled by the boy’s obvious trust in him. ‘You can?’ He took a sip of sweet white apple juice that suddenly felt pleasantly refreshing to his taste buds.
Maximus’s stool scraped across the ground and he padded over to a corner of the house. Picking up a shovel he said, ‘After sending the letter to the emperor, father thought he should hide his journals. He said they contained too much valuable information to leave lying around and he didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands.’ He swaggered down the garden path towards the field in the manner of one pleased to be doing something of importance for a senator from Rome instead of helping women clean the house.
‘It was only after my husband retired from the army that he plucked up the courage to send that letter,’ the woman said. ‘I’m pleased they’ve sent someone to investigate. If Fabius had…’ She stifled a sob.
Vivius focused on a bee settling on a blue hyacinth and with a buzz bury into its centre. ‘Your husband was a brave man for writing it,’ he said. He wasn’t sure whether that was true or not, but it seemed the right things to say to a grieving widow.
‘Do you think so?’ Encouraged by the crumb of good opinion he had about the man she loved, she gave a watery smile. ‘Do you think you’ll get the men responsible for his death?’
Vivius avoided her steady gaze. ‘Perhaps.’
They sat in silence watching the boy digging up the leeks.
‘Do you know what’s in the letter?’ Vivius asked.
‘Yes.’
Vivius waited.
‘Fabius writes about Pontius Pilate’s financial indiscretions.’ The woman managed a half smile. ‘But don’t ask me for details. The man to help you there is a Greek called Nikolaos. He was bookkeeper to Pilate until he was dismissed for challenging Pilate over the taxes.’
‘So there is proof of tax fraud?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Is Nikolaos, the bookkeeper still in Jerusalem?’
The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not much help.’
‘On the contrary, you’re being extremely
helpful,’ Vivius assured her. He watched Maximus making his way back to them with the shovel slung over his shoulder, a linen bundle in one arm and half a dozen leeks in the other. He deposited the shovel and leeks on the ground, and there was an air of triumph in the way the boy dropped the linen bundle on the table.
Soil scattered as Vivius removed the dirty linen wrappings. When he had peeled the last one off, he found himself staring at an oblong cedar wood box. He tried forcing it open but the lid was stiff; swollen from the damp earth he guessed. Removing his dagger from his tunic, he pried open the lid. Inside were wax tablets and rolls of tightly wrapped parchments, and at the bottom scraps of poor-quality papyrus with scribbled Greek lettering, hieroglyphics and doodling on them. Ignoring these he unrolled a parchment, only to find himself staring at neat but indecipherable notes, most of which was in Fabius’s own form of shorthand. Vivius’s heart sank as he opened the wax tablets to find the same.
‘Can you read these?’
The boy and his mother shook their heads.
Vivius tapped his upper lip, wondering how in the name of all the gods he was supposed to decipher these notes, and why Fabius had used them in the first place. He stopped tapping. Security, he decided. Fabius would use it for security. So, if he taught Roman auxiliaries he obviously had intelligence and the capability for clear thinking which ruled out the question of him being senile. Vivius mentally ran down the rest of his list for discrediting the centurion.
‘One question, and forgive me for being blunt,’ Vivius said turning to the woman. ‘His work at the fort and as a market gardener wouldn’t have made him a rich man, but…’ Vivius gestured around him. ‘Why would he jeopardise all this by sending the emperor a controversial letter on Pontius Pilate? What did he hope to gain from it?’
Mother and son glanced at each other in puzzlement, but then the woman’s eyes filled with tears as she realised the implications of his question. ‘Fabius didn’t want to gain anything, Senator. He sent it because he was a man of integrity, a man of principles. When he retired from the army he used his savings to buy this place, but he always said he should have done something about the cruelties and injustices he’d seen in Jerusalem. He didn’t because he had been afraid but he wrote it all down, as you can see. It was his conscience that prompted him to send that letter to the emperor.’
Vivius could feel his plans for discrediting Fabius and his letter diminishing rapidly.
Maximus laid his hand on Vivius’s arm. ‘Senator, you will do something about my father’s letter won’t you? You’ll get justice for him, won’t you?’
Vivius glanced down at the grubby fingernails and was surprised to find himself moved by the boy’s obvious love for his father. He moved his arm away, uncomfortably aware that Maximus appeared to have had what he had always dreamed of having from his own father. Vivius pursed his lips. Blast that farmhouse! Ever since he’d decided to pull it down he’d had nothing but vague images and reminders of his father. They kept creeping up on him like wolves stalking their prey, determined to get their claws into the awful memories he had put so firmly behind him.
Returning the wax tablets and parchments to the wooden box, he said, ‘Yes.’ And as he quietly closed the lid he realised he was surprised to find himself pushing all plans of discrediting the centurion to one side. ‘I’ll do something about his letter. I’ll get justice for your father.’
But the question of how hung over him like a heavy black cloud.
* * *
Pontius Pilate twisted in his saddle, his round bulbous eyes squinting through the dazzling orange sunrise emerging over the horizon and skimming over the gleaming bronzed helmets of the small force of Roman auxiliary marching behind him. When they settled on his wife trailing at the back he pursed his lips, still irritated over the way she had kept him waiting over a trivial household incident of a slave not packing the right clothes or some such nonsense. He dug the heels of his boots sharply into his dappled mare’s flesh to urge the animal forward. She tossed her proud head and snorted in protest, her breath hot and steamy in the cold morning air. Pilate paid her no heed. He had his mind set on lengthening the distance between himself and the legion. It wouldn’t increase their pace, he knew that. They were trained to march at a steady rhythm of twenty miles a day and twenty miles they would do until they reached Jerusalem, seventy miles away. But he wanted the extra distance between them to give himself time to think.
To his frustration, galloping hooves informed him his thought process would have to wait. He turned; Claudia was bearing down on him, her purple travelling cloak billowing out behind her, her long auburn curls blowing in the breeze. He watched, admiring her magnificent horsemanship and the way her body swayed provocatively in the saddle but then turned away as she drew alongside him.
‘Why are you so far ahead?
‘I had intended to be alone to think,’ he said pointedly. His voice was silky smooth, cultured, but nasal as if his adenoids were blocked.
‘What about?’
‘I have problems.’
‘Well, I guessed your bad mood was more than having to leave the comforts of Caesarea to attend the Jewish Passover, my love.’ Her voice was low, almost teasing.
He glanced at her sharply but not unkindly. He had no illusions as to why a beautiful woman like Claudia had chosen him out of all her admirers. He wasn’t the handsomest man in the world, he knew that. His face was too long, his nose too pointed, his eyes bulged like a frog, and his hairline had begun to recede faster than he would have liked. On top of which he was putting on far too much weight. Nevertheless, he saw himself as an intelligent, experienced and ambitious bureaucrat with connections to powerful men like Sejanus; and Claudia was a woman who loved powerful men.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
He pursed his lips to give the impression he was considering her offer. There had been times when he had found it prudent to confide in Claudia. Coming from a political family, she had a remarkable insight into the world of politics, and there was no doubt her high connections to the Imperial family had been extremely useful to him on occasions.
‘Remember Fabius, my former Chief of Staff?’ He didn’t wait to find out if she did but continued, ‘Some weeks ago a centurion appeared at the fort with a fresh intake of new recruits. He turned out to be an old comrade of Fabius’s; they’d fought together in Germania, I believe.’ Pilate turned his mouth down at the corners. ‘Fabius, I never liked the man. He annoyed me, too fastidious, had this disapproving manner about him. He left my employ bearing me a grudge over’—he waved his ringed fingers dismissively in the air—’some incident or other.’ He glanced across to make sure he had Claudia’s full attention; he had. He never liked his listener’s eyes to glaze over while he was talking. ‘I became suspicious when I was informed Fabius was at the fort when he shouldn’t have been. He had spent the entire night in the great hall writing, and had handed the centurion a letter before he left. But what really concerned me was that on the centurion’s return to Rome, he headed straight for the emperor on the Isle of Capri.’
‘I saw him, a disfigured centurion with an eye patch and one side of his face… Ugh!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Pilate waved his ringed fingers dismissively at her this time, irritated at having his story interrupted by trivialities.
‘How do you know he headed straight for the emperor?’
‘Because my informant is reliable, Claudia.’ Pilate’s jaw jutted out in a manner that should deter further questioning on the subject.
‘How?’ she persisted.
‘Because whenever your repulsive centurion is in Rome, he visits Tiberius.’
‘I thought Tiberius didn’t received visitors?’
‘He doesn’t,’ Pilate said with forced patience. ‘Sejanus discourages them, forbids them even, but this centurion is an exception. When Tiberius’s son Drusus was alive, the centurion watched over him on the battlefield. Now Drusus is dead, and Tiberius likes to talk a
bout the battles he fought. This is one visitor not even Sejanus can deter.’
‘So you think this centurion handed Tiberius the letter?’
‘I know he did because…’ he paused. ‘Some weeks later a senator from Rome landed in Caesarea.’ Pilate delivered the news in a slow, smooth silky drawl and noticed with some pleasure that not only did he have Claudia’s full attention but he had brought an expression of concern to her face.
‘A senator?’
‘Exactly! A rare breed this far from Rome. He must have been sent by the emperor.’
‘You’re guessing, but supposing you’re right, what will you do?’
‘I’ve done it,’ he said in the manner of a man well in control of events. ‘As soon as I was informed of the senator’s arrival I left orders for Fabius’s house to be searched, any copies of his letter destroyed and he was to be given a…a warning. And it’s as well I acted quickly. The following day the senator appeared at the fort. And do you know what he was asking for? The whereabouts of Centurion Fabius Salonianus. Still think I’m guessing?’ Pilate sniffed through one nostril in an attempt to clear his blocked nose.
Claudia made no comment so they headed south in silence, passing small white houses nestling on steep slopes, clusters of lime and orange groves, merchants with loaded donkeys and proud-necked camels rolling steadily along. Curious shepherds herding sheep stopped to watch the Procurator and his small auxiliary force, occasionally children waved, but the Roman Governor of Judea considered it too far beneath him to acknowledge the people he governed. Besides, he was too wrapped up in his own affairs.
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