Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  The Hellenistic structure in which the Roman procurator Gaius Pontius Pilatus lived served many functions simultaneously. The upper level was, of course, the comfortably furnished living quarters of the procurator and his family; the ground level served as the center of administrative activities, including, of course, the frequent trials at which Pilatus sat as the judge from whose sentence there was no appeal, save to the Emperor Tiberius, who never bothered listening to appeals anyway; and a lower level, a windowless, humid, fetid pit encased by the foundation stones of the building, served as a prison.

  The prison did not need to be large, for long-term incarceration had no place in Roman law or Roman custom. Punishments for the commission of crimes were clearly stated, few in number, and quickly carried out; fines for minor offenses, enslavement for not so minor offenses, mutilation for certain particularly heinous acts, and, of course, execution for any one of the long list of capital crimes. Execution for a Roman citizen meant decapitation or, if the State chose to be generous, the privilege of being allowed to commit suicide. For a non-citizen, execution meant being tied or nailed to a piece of wood which would then be hoisted up and affixed to the top of a tall stake, where the unfortunate criminal would be left hanging to die.

  For these reasons, the prison into which the centurion Strabo threw his prisoner was neither large nor full. Strabo sent for a scribe while his men busied themselves with the task of chaining the prisoner to one of the damp, mossy walls. As a Roman of the upper class, Strabo was, of course, literate in both Latin and Greek, but he would not demean himself by writing down information about the prisoner with his own hand. That’s why these god-cursed Greek scribes are on our payroll, he thought with irritation. Let them earn their wages.

  When the scribe arrived, Strabo addressed the prisoner for the first time since arresting him. "What is your name?"

  The prisoner shook his head. "I have no idea."

  This reply resulted in a resounding punch in the face from Strabo’s powerful fist. "Don’t waste my time, scum. I asked you a question and I expect an answer. Now, what is your name?"

  The prisoner looked up at the centurion with a surprising absence of fear. "I call myself Chaldaeus."

  "Yes, and I am Romanus, and Plautus here is Tuscanus, and everyone in this filthy excuse for a city is either Judaeus or Graecus or Syrius," Strabo shouted, punching the prisoner again. "I’m not asking you for your nationality, Chaldean! What is your name?"

  The prisoner shrugged again. "I do not know my name. I have forgotten it. I call myself Chaldaeus because my earliest memories are of living in Chaldea. It was from thence that I travelled to this place three decades ago."

  Strabo’s face grew red as he listened to this transparent lie, for the prisoner was obviously a man in his twenties. He drove his fist into the prisoner’s face once more, noticing but not commenting on the fact that the placid face neither broke nor bled beneath the blows.

  "Centurion," the soldier Plautus said, "let’s just kill him and be done with it. What difference does it make what his name is?"

  "Plautus..." Strabo began, a hint of warning in his voice.

  "The procurator has been up all night trying to deal with those god-cursed priests. He’s been trying to make them understand that Roman law does not allow the execution of anyone innocent of a capital crime, but they keep demanding an execution..."

  "I know, Plautus," Strabo interrupted angrily, "but that has nothing to do with anything. Do you think that the procurator would waste so much time on that madman if he did not take our laws seriously? He could just wave his hand and send the prisoner off to his death and so save himself a good deal of aggravation, but he won’t do that, because the law is the law! And if he concerns himself with the law when it involves this Yeshua, then he will concern himself with the law when it involves this miscreant here."

  "Yeshua?" the prisoner asked softly. "Yeshua bar Yoshef, the prophet from Nazareth? He has been arrested?"

  Strabo turned back to the prisoner and prepared to strike him again, but then held back as the man’s words registered on his angry, tired mind. "You know this man?" he asked.

  "I have seen him quite frequently," Chaldaeus replied. "I have listened to him preach for many years."

  "I asked you if you know him," Strabo repeated tersely.

  Chaldaeus sighed. "No, I have never spoken to him. I have followed him and I have watched him, but I have never spoken to him. It did not seem that it would be of any use."

  This cryptic comment was ignored by Strabo, who turned to Plautus and said, "Has the procurator interrogated any of Yeshua’s followers?"

  "I don’t think he has," the soldier replied. "I don’t believe that any of them stayed around after the arrest."

  Strabo shook his head with disgust. "There is no such thing as loyalty east of Messina," he muttered. "Plautus, keep an eye on this murderer. I think the procurator will want to know about him."

  He turned and climbed up the dark, narrow flight of stone steps which led from the prison out onto the dusty Judean street. They had approached the building from the rear, and Strabo was not prepared for what greeted him when he turned the corner. The courtyard outside the procurator’s residence was packed with people, shouting in their strange, guttural tongue, waving their fists, their faces contorted with hatred. At the top of the wide dais which formed the entranceway to the residence, the procurator was standing and watching the crowd with undisguised disgust, not bothering to lower himself by attempting to make himself heard above the din. Beside him stood a tall, thin man, his hands bound in front of his naked body, his beard and back covered with dried blood as fresh blood streamed from the crown of thorns which encircled his head. Yeshua the preacher, Strabo thought as he pushed his way roughly through the crowd. The soldiers whose shields and javelins provided an armed barrier between the dais and the courtyard helped to clear his way, and he mounted the steps toward the procurator.

  "This man would make himself king," a voice boomed from behind him in thickly accented Greek. Strabo recognized the voice as that of Caiaphas, the corrupt high priest of the bizarre religion of this benighted people. "That is treason by Rome’s own law! He merits death!"

  As Strabo drew closer to Pilatus he heard the procurator say to a guard, "Remain here and keep this rabble as subdued as possible. I must think, and I cannot think in the midst of this chaos." Pilatus turned and walked back into the building. Strabo quickened his pace to catch up with him.

  "My lord," the centurion called out, "we have just arrested a murderer who claims to have listened to this man on many occasions. I thought that perhaps you might wish to interrogate him."

  Pilatus turned and looked at Strabo. "One of his followers?"

  "No, my lord, not at least by his own admission. But he says that he has heard much of what this Yeshua has said over the past three years."

  Pilatus seated himself upon an ornately carved wooden chair before a long marble table. "Have him sent here, Strabo. Perhaps I will be fortunate and this prisoner of yours will provide me with legitimate grounds for executing this fanatic."

  Strabo nodded curtly to a soldier who was standing beside the table, and this was all he needed to do to send the soldier off to fetch the prisoner. He knew that Plautus would understand immediately who was being sent for, and so no elaboration was necessary. He turned back to Pilatus and said, "I fear that I shall never learn to understand these people, my lord."

  "Nor I, Strabo, nor I," Pilatus said wearily as he poured himself a flagon of thick red wine. Strabo did not comment on how the procurator had recently increased his intake of the potent vintage, nor the fact that he had abandoned the Roman custom of mixing his wine with water. Strabo reasoned that having to rule as fractious and incomprehensible a people as the Jews would lead any sane man to drink too much wine, too early in the day. The procurator swallowed a mouthful of the syrupy liquid and then went on. "The orient will be our ruination, Strabo, it will be our ruination. The Egyptia
ns, the Jews, the Syrians, there isn’t one rational mind in the whole east of the Empire."

  "No, my lord," Strabo agreed honestly.

  "From the day our fathers flooded Italy with Punic gold and Punic slaves we’ve been deceiving ourselves about our own destiny. We should have let Carthage keep North Africa."

  "Yes, my lord," Strabo agreed now dishonestly, not pointing out to his commander that Rome’s power was largely built on the ashes of Carthage.

  "Were it not Egypt’s grain, I would recommend to my wife’s granduncle that we give the whole of the east to the Parthians. Let them deal with these deity-intoxicated idiots."

  "Yes, my lord." Strabo knew how the Emperor Tiberius, the granduncle of Pilatus’s wife, would respond to such a suggestion. He chose not to mention it.

  "What do we get from the east, besides Egyptian grain, Strabo?" Pilatus asked rhetorically and then took another drink. "We get rebellion, disease, ingratitude and a plethora of absurd religions with which our spoiled and pampered ladies amuse themselves. Isis, Dionysus, Mithras...foreigner’s gods for bored Romans." He shook his head sadly. "It is to weep, Strabo. It is to weep."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "The Roman gods don’t seem to be good enough for our silly women anymore, Strabo. Every day it seems that some new superstition comes floating in from Egypt or Syria or Parthia or Judea. Why, my own wife is fascinated by these so-called mystery religions. Last year she was initiated into the Isis cult, and now she..." He turned as he heard soft uncertain footsteps approaching from the rear of the room. As if responding to his mention of her, his wife had descended from the living quarters on the floor above and was walking slowly and unsteadily toward him. When Pilatus addressed her his voice was cold and biting, utterly void of affection. He had married her largely because of her connections to the imperial family, and had hoped that such a marriage would serve to advance his career. Her beauty was also an incentive, but there were many beautiful women, and one did not marry for so trivial a reason.

  His coldness reflected his anger and frustration, for he, like his subordinate Strabo, felt himself ill-used by the Emperor. While others of his acquaintance resided in peaceful luxury in Egypt and Greece and Dalmatia and Italy itself, merrily stealing fortunes from the subject populations, Pilatus had been consigned to Judea, the most notorious festering boil on the body of the Empire. Is it my fault, he often asked himself, that in the bloody internal strife of the family of the Caesars, that I, Pilatus, have married into a branch out of favor with Tiberius? I should have married Drusilla, he thought, Caligula’s sister. Now that would have been both profitable and safe. He made no attempt to mask his hostility toward his wife as she approached. "Up so early, my dear?" he asked sarcastically. "I assume then that your cult held a rather short meeting last evening? Which god is it this year, by the way? I can never remember his name..."

  "Gaius," his wife said, her voice shaking and frail as she leaned against a pillar for support, "a dream...I had a dream..."

  "Oh, of that I have no doubt," Pilatus said. "Poppies again, my sweet? I have told you before, Claudia, to keep to refreshments made from grapes."

  Claudia Procula, wife of Gaius Pontius Pilatus and grandneice of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar, shook her head. "Gaius, listen to me..."

  "Some Parthian god, isn’t it?" he asked casually, taking another drink. "Azerius, Azorius, something like that...?"

  "Ahura," she said weakly. "The god Ahura. Zoroaster’s god. The great god. The only god."

  "Ah, yes, the only god," he said smiling wickedly at Strabo. "There seem to be a great many ‘only gods’ in this part of the world."

  "Gaius, please," she said, beginning to weep, "I was warned in a dream, warned about this Yeshua. He is the Saoshyant, the chosen one of Ahura Mazda. Let him go, Gaius, free him. If you kill him...if you kill him..."

  "If I kill him, there will be one less Jew to cause trouble for me." He took yet another drink. "I sometimes think that we would be well advised to kill all of them and get it over with." Strabo did not take these last words seriously. He knew that Pilatus respected the rule of law like all good Romans; still, Strabo thought, a world without Jews is an attractive idea.

  "Gaius..." Claudia pleaded, "I am begging you, I am begging you, you must release him, you must!"

  Pilatus sat back in his chair and appraised his wife. "In exchange for what, Claudia? In exchange for what? Caiaphas doesn’t come out and say it, but he is offering me a quiescent, obedient city if I agree to kill this man who so openly condemns the corruption in this temple of theirs. What do you offer me if I spare him?"

  She frowned. "Wh...what are you saying...?"

  "It is very simple, my dear," Pilatus smiled. "I married you because I had hoped that such a union would help me, give me power and wealth and influence. It has done none of those things, and I wish to be rid of you, I wish to be able to make a more useful connection."

  The look on Claudia’s face shifted from confusion to anger. "Divorce me?! You wouldn’t dare!"

  "No, of course I wouldn’t," Pilatus agreed. "In favor or out, the Emperor’s grandniece is still the Emperor’s grandniece, and I doubt that Tiberius would appreciate it were I to throw you out." He leaned forward. "But if I were to accuse you of sedition, accuse you of conspiring against Rome with these Parthian religious fanatics, these Zoroastrians of yours...Parthiais an enemy of Rome, after all...and if you would be inclined not to contest the accusation, I would be able to behead you or let you open a vein. I can be rid of you and earn the Emperor’s gratitude at the same time."

  She stared at him with shock and disbelief. "You must be mad!"

  "No," he shook his head calmly. "All I am saying is that if this Yeshua’s life is so important to you, I’ll give you the opportunity to exchange it for your own." He smiled. "All of these odd eastern religions tell you about a life of reward after death, do they not? Well, my dear Claudia, I am offering you the opportunity to ensure for yourself a place of honor in your...what was his name?...Ahura, was it?...in your Ahura’s afterlife."

  "Don’t be ridiculous!" she said angrily.

  "You do not accept my proposition, then?"

  "Of course not!"

  He laughed grimly. "So much for your most recent devotion to your most recent deity." He turned as he saw the guard dragging the prisoner toward him. "Now get out of here, Claudia, and go sacrifice a goat or something. I’m busy." He turned away from her and looked at the prisoner. "This is he?" Pilatus asked Strabo.

  "Yes, my lord," the centurion replied.

  "Well, my good fellow..." Pilatus began and then frowned as he realized that the prisoner was not even looking at him. The man who stood bound before him was staring intently at Pilatus’ wife Claudia, a look on his face of complete and total bewilderment. Pilatus glanced at his wife and said, "Claudia, I told you to leave. Now, leave!"

  Strabo watched as Claudia Procula turned and stormed angrily back upstairs, and then he laughed. "My lord, I do believe the lady Claudia thought that your suggestion was serious!"

  "Don’t be too certain that it wasn’t," he muttered darkly, and then returned his attention to the prisoner. "I would strongly recommend to you that you gaze upon Roman ladies with a bit less impertinence." He took another drink of wine, draining the flagon, and then he asked, "What is your name?"

  The prisoner’s attention had been raptly held by the woman who was even now disappearing up the stairs, and he did not respond at first. After a moment he said, "I...I do not know my name."

  Pilatus looked at Strabo. "What is this man, an idiot?"

  "I don’t know, my lord," the centurion replied. "All he would tell us is that he is a Chaldean."

  "Very well. Chaldean, if you choose to go nameless into your grave, it is all the same to me. I hear that you know the preacher, Yeshua of Nazareth. Is this so?"

  "Know him?" Chaldaeus asked. "No, I do not know him. I have followed him and watched him and listened to him, waiting to see if he would be able
to help me. At long last I realized that what he offers is not what I desire, and so I never approached him."

  "Indeed," Pilatus said, beginning to suspect that this prisoner would be of no use to him. "And what does he offer?"

  "Eternal life," Chaldaeus replied simply.

  "Eternal life," Pilatus echoed with mock pensiveness. "And you do not wish to have eternal life."

  "No."

  "And what is it you wish to have?"

  Chaldaeus sighed. "Death."

  Pilatus laughed. "Well, I believe that we can accommodate you, Chaldean. Strabo, what was he arrested for...?"

  "Murder, my lord," the centurion replied, "but might it not be a good idea to question him as to the things he heard the Nazarene say? He told me that he has been following him about for a long while."

  Pilatus turned back to Chaldaeus. "How long have you known...I mean, how long have you been observing the Nazarene?"

  "Since his birth," Chaldaeus replied.

  Pilatus repressed a smile, for the prisoner standing before him was quite obviously younger than Yeshua. "Since his birth, you say?" I was right, Pilatus thought. He is an idiot.

  "Yes," Chaldaeus said. "I was in Chaldea when he was born. There were travelers, men of knowledge and wisdom, whom I met there. They came from a land farther east, and somehowtheir language seemed familiar to me, so I followed them. They had been vouchsafed a prophecy and were going to pay homage to a deliverer. I desired deliverance, and so I went with them to his birthplace. I bided my time, I waited, and I watched, and..."

  "Strabo," Pilatus interrupted, "any doubt as to this man’s guilt?"