The Redemption of Pontius Pilate

by Lewis Ben Smith

  Pilate nodded. “Can she travel?” he asked.

  The physician nodded. “It will be a bit painful, but if you handle her carefully, she should be able to make a journey. She will gain back a bit of strength every day.”

  Pilate thanked the man and re-entered the room. His wife stood and came toward him. He tried to embrace her, but she pulled away, glaring at him.

  “You knew I never trusted that little monster!” she snapped. “Now look at what your ambitions have done to our daughter!”

  Pilate nodded. He could not deny the truth behind her allegations. “I never dreamed it would end so badly,” he said. “For what it is worth, I am sorry. Sorrier than I have ever been for anything in my life.”

  “Did you kill him?” she asked. “No one will tell me anything!”

  “I was . . . interrupted by a rather sharp blow to the head,” said Pilate. “But he has two broken arms, and no girl will call him handsome for some time. I intended to make a eunuch out of him, but I was stopped short of that goal.”

  Porcia finally stepped to his side and touched the knot on the back of his head. He winced.

  “It does not look too bad,” she said. “I have seen you come home from the Suburba with worse.”

  Pilate smiled ruefully. “Back in my younger, wilder days, eh? All that is behind us now. We must leave this place at first light, so let us pack up quickly. Send for Democles and the other servants to remove all our effects to the ship.”

  She nodded. “Porcia will heal more quickly at home, away from the horrible memories of this place,” she said.

  “That might be true,” Pilate replied, “but we are not going home.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “What do you mean?” she said. “Our daughter is too grievously injured to travel anywhere else!”

  “That no longer matters,” he said. “The Emperor has decided, for our safety, that I must be sent far, far away, and that you must come with me.”

  “For our safety?” she said. “Safety from what?”

  “From who, you mean!” said Pilate. “The heir to the Imperial throne lies in a bedroom nearby with two broken arms and a smashed face that I gave him. I doubt little Gaius is going to tearfully realize the error of his ways and cry pardon! So Tiberius sends us far, far away to Judea, and hopefully young Gaius, by the time he is Emperor Gaius Caligula, will have forgotten this episode.”

  Procula Porcia’s face slowly crumbled into tears. “So no matter how barbarically he acted, it is we who must be punished for his crimes!” she exclaimed. “Why on earth does Tiberius insist that such a worm must be his heir?”

  “That I do not know,” said Pilate. “I begged him to change his mind and name someone else, but he feels trapped into following through with his current course of action. I have a feeling that young Caligula is going to be an absolute disaster, but Tiberius no longer listens to me. So our only choice is to take our daughter and go to Judea. I have been appointed governor there, so at least it is not a punitive exile.”

  “Judea!” she said. “We both know that vile little province is a dumping ground for Senators too incompetent to be trusted with the governorship of somewhere important!”

  “That is why I am being sent there,” said Pilate. “It is my punishment, my place of atonement. Tiberius thinks if he makes a show of being angry with me, it will be easier later on to make Caligula forget my offense.”

  She snarled. “I wish you had killed the little culus!!” she snapped.

  “Such language, dear!” Pilate said. “Where did you learn such a horrible word?”

  She gave a tiny smile, her first since their daughter’s attack. “You don’t live in the Aventine for so many years and not pick up a little of the local lingo,” she said.

  “Tata?” came a tiny voice. Pilate looked at the bed and saw that Porcia Minor was awake, looking at him with her one good eye. The other was barely visible beneath the purplish swelling. Pilate rushed to her bedside.

  “I am here, my little sparrow,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

  “I hurt,” she said. “Everything hurts, especially . . . down there.” She gestured at her hips.

  His fury boiled up white-hot within him, but he suppressed it. “I am so sorry for what he did to you,” he said. “He will not be hurting anyone else for a good long while, if that is any comfort.”

  “Did you kill him?” she asked. “I shouldn’t say so, but I hope that you did!”

  Pilate sighed. “No,” he said, “they interrupted me before I could finish. But your broken arm and smashed face are repaid double! Now, let me give you something to take the pain away.” A flagon of sweet wine had been set near enough to the charcoal brazier to be nicely warmed, and he poured her a cup and added a few drops of the milk of poppy to it. He held it up to her bruised, cracked lips and she took a few sips.

  “Tastes funny,” she said.

  “It will help you sleep, and numb the pain,” said Porcia Major. “And tomorrow tata is taking us far, far away, where you will never have to look on the face of Gaius Caligula again.”

  “That will be nice,” said Porcia in a very soft voice. Moments later her eyes closed, and her breathing became deep and regular.

  Meanwhile, Democles had arrived and was hovering at the door. Pilate gave instructions for all their personal goods to be packed away and loaded onto the ship the Emperor had chartered for them, and for the family to be woken an hour before dawn. Then he and his wife lay down on either side of their bruised and broken daughter and tried to sleep, but their thoughts and memories ran through their minds for hours to follow, and sleep eluded them both.

  It was still quite dark when Democles woke them—or at least, got them out of bed. A litter had been prepared for Porcia Minor. The drug she had taken made her so groggy she barely whimpered as he lifted her from the bed and placed her in the litter and covered her with blankets. He and Porcia donned clean robes and their sandals, and Pilate ordered that his sword and dagger be brought to him and strapped them on. He would not go unarmed in the future, he decided. The walk down the mountain trail was very quiet, as Pilate and his wife were locked in their own thoughts.

  The ship Tiberius had chartered for them was fairly large and comfortable. The captain showed them to a cabin which was, if not spacious, at least less cramped than most shipboard accommodations Pilate had used over the years. There was one large bunk bed that two people could fit in if they were fond of each other, and a smaller one off to the side. Pilate carried his daughter to the smaller bunk and laid her there, then paid the litter bearers off and went topside to talk to the captain while Porcia unpacked their personal items.

  The captain was a huge Persian named Diomyrus, with arms like oak trees and skin like copper. He bowed when Pilate came topside.

  “Journey to Judea this time of year takes two months or so,” he said. “We will take on cargo at Rhegium, and then land at Crete, then straight shot eastward to Joppa. From there, short ride up the coast on horseback to Caesarea. You are to be new governor of Judea, yes?”

  Pilate nodded. The captain scowled.

  “Bad people, the Jews,” he said. “Invisible gods and their followers cannot be trusted. Our gods—they are made of marble and gold and wood. You can see them, leave offerings at their feet. Our gods laugh and cry and fornicate with mortal women. Our gods are like us! Their god big, invisible. Float in the clouds, demands burnt offerings, does not make love to their women. Who wants a god that does not love fun?”

  Pilate filed that away for future reference. He had very little experience with Jews, but knew that their province was home to fewer than half of them. The Greeks had liked them, apparently—there were millions of them living throughout the old Greek dominions, especially in the territory of the Ptolemies. Alexandria, it was said, was home to more Jews than Judea! But the province of Judea was a poor, blighted region whose inhabitants hated Rome with a passion. No governor had yet been able to make the place peaceful and obe
dient. Pilate decided that he would do his best to make Judea a model province, and so redeem his reputation. It was the best he could make of a bad situation.

  When he went below, Porcia Minor was awake and holding her mother’s hand. He smiled at her and sat at the foot of her narrow bunk.

  “Where are we going, tata?” she asked.

  “I have been made governor of Judea,” he said. “You and your mother will accompany me to the province.”

  “Judea—isn’t that a bad place?” she asked.

  “It’s a difficult province to govern,” said Pilate. “That is why the Emperor is sending me there. I am to get things into shape.”

  “Is it my fault?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” said Pilate.

  “Are you being sent away because of me?” she said.

  “No, precious!” he said. “What happened to you was no one’s fault except for Gaius Caligula, and what has happened to me is completely unrelated. The Emperor needed a good governor for a bad province, to make it run better. That is all.”

  She looked at him, her bruised and swollen face still full of pain. “I think he is sending you away because you hurt Gaius, and you hurt Gaius because he hurt me. So it is my fault!” She turned her face to the wall and began crying. Pilate bowed his head in grief for a moment. Procula Porcia took his hand and squeezed it, and gave him a look that was full of regret—but also of compassion. Despite their current predicament, Pilate thanked the gods that he had married so well. But the atmosphere in the room was oppressive, so he turned and went back up topside to watch the ship get underway.

  The first week of the journey was uneventful. The winds were light and southwesterly, and the ship was headed almost due south, so most of the sails were furled and the crew rowed the ship steadily southward, using the aft sail for steerage. It took them four days to reach Rhegium, an important seaport near the toe of the Italian boot. There they took on two hundred amphorae of wine and many bolts of fine Italian linens, which they would sail to Crete with.

  The ship had a crew of fifty or so, of whom about twenty-four would man the oars at a time, working in eight-hour shifts. The first mate was a wiry little Greek named Demosthenes, and the crew was a polyglot assemblage of mongrels from all over the Empire. After making a few inquiries, Pilate found that two of them were from Judea. He questioned each of them separately, trying to get a better feel for these people he was going to govern for the next few years.

  “We are the Chosen People,” said Simeon, a forty-year-old Jew with the massive shoulders of someone who had manned the oars for many years. “That is the blessing and curse of the Jews. Our Scriptures teach us that God called our ancestor Abraham to the lands around Jordan two thousand years ago, and promised to give those lands to him and his descendants forever and ever. Abraham’s son and grandson lived there all their lives, until Jacob, whom we name Israel, went as an old man to live in Egypt with his son Joseph.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Pilate. “Is not Israel the name you give your entire nation?”

  “Exactly,” said the man. “Jacob had twelve sons, whose descendants became twelve tribes, and so the sons of Israel are numbered as twelve tribes to this very day. I am of the tribe of Asher myself.”

  “So why did Jacob go to Egypt?” asked Pilate.

  “His younger son Joseph was hated by his brothers, because his dreams foretold he would rule over all of them,” explained Simeon. “So they sold him into slavery, and he wound up becoming the Grand Vizier of Egypt, the Pharaoh’s most trusted servant. When a great famine struck all the lands, Joseph was forewarned by God and made sure the lands of Egypt would have food in abundance by saving up in advance. When the lands of Israel began to starve, he revealed himself to his brothers and father as their long-lost sibling, and invited them to come and stay in Egypt as honored guests of the Pharaoh.”

  “But weren’t the Jews slaves in Egypt?” asked Pilate, recalling a story he had read long ago.

  “They were,” said Simeon, “but not right away. A new Pharaoh, from a new dynasty, saw how numerous the descendants of Jacob had become, and feared their might, so he enslaved them all long after Joseph’s time. They were treated most cruelly, and cried to God for a deliverer. So he sent them Moses, who called down mighty plagues on Egypt until Pharaoh agreed to let them go back to the land promised to Abraham. Moses also was given a code of laws by God on Mount Sinai, and wrote for us the Torah, which became the heart of our Scriptures.”

  Pilate nodded, and dismissed the man back to work. What an odd mythology the Jews had! He wondered if the story of Romulus and Remus would sound equally strange to someone who had never heard it.

  He talked to Simeon several times, as well as to Zakariyah, the other Jewish crewman. Zakariyah was more cynical and less religious than his companion, but in essence his description of Jewish culture and history was very close to what Pilate had already heard. At the very least, Pilate thought, he would not arrive in Caesarea completely ignorant of the strange nation he was to govern.

  He spent so much time trying to learn about the Jews, at least in part, to take his mind off his worries about his daughter. Porcia Minor was recovering physically, but her spirit seemed broken. Pilate and Procula Porcia took turns trying to reassure her and make her feel loved, but she was convinced that the entire family was being punished because she had somehow failed as Gaius’ betrothed spouse. Pilate could not convince her that the assault was not something she had brought on herself. In some childish way, she still refused to believe Gaius could have done something so awful without being provoked by her in some way.

  Dealing with her depression left Pilate feeling angry and frustrated. The job of the paterfamilias was to make things right, and he could not seem to do that for his daughter. The hungry beast within him that thrived on bloodshed and pain threatened to rise to the fore each time he saw his little girl crying again, and it was harder and harder for him to keep control.

  It was in this frame of mind one night that he returned to his family’s cabin. Procula Porcia was going to give Porcia Minor a bath, and Pilate had absented himself from the chamber to give them privacy. Romans were not prudish about nudity, but since his daughter’s ordeal she had been obsessively modest, and Pilate wanted to give her space. But later that night, when he swung down the hatch and entered the short passage that led to their quarters, he saw the hunched figure of a man at the door, trying to peek in through a crack between the boards. The beast in Pilate’s breast burst its cage immediately, and he was on the man, his hand over the bearded mouth and his blade at the throat, in a heartbeat.

  Mindful of noise, he dragged the crewman topside. “Not a word!” he hissed, and spun the man about. He recognized him as one of the rowers, an Italian nicknamed Strabo for his crossed eyes.

  “What were you doing?” he demanded.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s been two weeks at sea with no womenfolk to look at!” said Strabo. “I meant no harm—I just wanted a peek at the girl!”

  “That girl has been through enough misery without a common toad like you leering at her while her mother gives her a bath!” snapped Pilate.

  “I meant no harm, Excellency, and she would never have known—” the crewman tried to protest, but his comments were cut short as Pilate’s blade severed his windpipe. A sharp kick to the chest sent the gurgling corpse overboard, and Pilate made his way to the captain’s quarters.

  “Here,” he said, throwing a few silver denarii down on the captain’s small desk. “For the loss of your crewman. And tell the others to keep their prying eyes away from my family’s cabin!”

  Diomyrus pocketed the coins and nodded. “Peeping at keyholes, eh?” he said. “Sailors will be sailors, I suppose, but they should not intrude on their betters! Which man was it?”

  “The Italian Strabo,” said Pilate.

  The captain shrugged. “He was a shirker and a weakling,” he said. “I can hire a better and stronger rower when I g
et to Joppa, and his absence will be little noted before then. My apologies for your inconvenience.”

  Another week saw them arrive at Malta and offload their cargo. Pilate took his daughter topside and tried to interest her in the operations of the ship, but she showed no curiosity about anything. He thought of the lively ten-year-old who had explored every part of their vessel on the return voyage from Spain, and wept for the child that Caligula had murdered with his vile deed, leaving only this blighted and frail wraith in her place.

  Three days later, even that pale shade of his daughter was taken from him forever. One night, as Pilate and his wife slept, Porcia Minor slipped out of her bunk and stole topside, where she threw herself into the sea. She left a short note behind, tucked under her pillow.

  Tata and mama, it read.

  Forgive me for what I am about to do. I cannot sleep, I cannot heal myself inside, and I know that the two of you are being punished because of me. My life has no joy and no hope; every time I close my eyes I hear his mocking laugh and see his evil smile as he thrusts himself into me again and again. I go to the one place where I hope he can never follow. Leaving the two of you behind is my only regret. Do not blame yourselves; I do this of my own free will. No girl ever had more loving parents. I shall wait for you in the land of the shades.

  Your loving daughter,

  Procula Porcia Minor

  Pilate ordered the ship turned around, and they meandered about the sea for three days, but her body was never sighted. The Mediterranean had swallowed his only child without a trace. Diomyrus commented that one of the ballast weights was missing from the hold, and theorized that the girl may have tied it around her waist before throwing herself into the deep. Procula Porcia wept for days, clinging to her husband for comfort. Pilate was devastated beyond words, but like a true Roman man, he showed his grief to no one except his wife. By the time the ship anchored in the magnificent artificial harbor at Caesarea, his tears had all been shed. It was time to make the most of his exile, and get on with his life. His daughter’s smile and voice he kept in a locked chamber of his heart, where he could visit them in his dreams for the rest of his life.