The Inquest

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  “Mind your business, thin-stripe,” Martius snapped. He looked over to Varro. “The scribe has a start, Julius, but we should be able to track him down.”

  Varro nodded. He turned to Crispus. “Quintus, take your troopers and scour the district for Aristarchus. Venerius, you can make yourself useful; ride to the cavalry post at Qumran. Alert the commander there to be on the lookout for the scribe. If we have not secured Aristarchus by the time you return, you will take ten men and ride to the Jericho road and patrol it to east and west in search of our fugitive. Away you go, the pair of you. Remember, I want Aristarchus brought back alive!”

  XIX

  THE APOTHECARY

  Macherus, Territory of Perea, Roman Province of Judea.

  May, A.D. 71

  Black smoke billowed above the walls and four square towers on the apex of the cone-shaped hill. The fortress of Macherus had been burning all day long. Part way down the chalky northern slope, the town of Macherus was also ablaze. On the flat below, a stone wall ten feet high ran for two encircling miles. Punctuating this wall every so often on rises and ridges were busy Roman camps, and, in the depressions, guard posts. Within the ring of stone and steel, and just to the west of the hill, a huge pile of stones rose up, the beginnings of an assault ramp which was to have run all the way to the summit of the hill. The ramp had not been needed. Lying on the ground in grotesque death poses, between the encircling wall and the hill, sometimes in piles, sometimes singly, were the bodies of seventeen hundred Jewish men. The siege of Macherus was at an end.

  “Ten days we were ahead of you, Varro.” The speaker was General Sextius Lucilius Bassus, commander of the 10th Legion for the past two months. Bassus was thirty years of age, tall, pale, and gaunt. There was a redness about his eyes, as if he suffered from a lack of sleep. “Ten days we spent building the siege works, and then, last night, the townspeople tried to break out. But we knew to expect it from an informant, and we were ready for them.”

  Varro stood with the general on the tribunal in the bustling main 10th Legion camp within the siege works, looking up at the smoking hill.

  “No survivors, general?” said the questor with a worried frown.

  “Too many damned survivors, Varro,” Bassus cursed. “We think at least nine hundred slipped past us in the dark. But even they will fall into our clutches before long.”

  “Nine hundred?” Varro brightened. There was still a possibility that Jews with information might be located. “Where do you think they went?”

  “South. To join the rebel leader Judas ben Jairus. Without a doubt.”

  “At Masada?”

  “No, Ben Jairus is at odds with the Daggermen at Masada. The damned fool Jews have spent more time fighting themselves than the Roman army during this damned war.”

  “Where is Ben Jairus? Do you know?”

  “My scouts have spotted some of his people down in the Negev Valley. We will be marching for the Negev tomorrow, once we are finished here.”

  “General, if I cannot find what I looking for here, would you object if my party and myself were to join you for the march to the Negev?”

  “If you must.” Bassus looked at him from the corner of his eye. “As long as you and your people keep out of my way.”

  “We will do our utmost not to inconvenience you, I assure you. How many Jews does Ben Jairus have with him?”

  “Hard to tell. The few who escaped with him from Jerusalem, the nine hundred from last night, and the three thousand or so I allowed to leave the fortress of Mecharus.”

  Varro looked at him with astonishment. “You allowed them to leave? Why?”

  “I had my reasons.” Bassus swung around and stepped down from the tribunal, then began to walk back toward the pretorium of the 10th Legion, forcing Varro to jump down and then trot to catch him up.

  Varro drew level with the general. “Can you share those reasons with me?

  “I…” Bassus suddenly gasped and stopped in his tracks. Then, draping his left over Varro’s shoulders, he put his weight on the questor. His right hand he put to his own belly, pressing hard.

  The surprised questor looked into Bassus’ face. It was contorted with pain. “What ails you, general? Is there something I can do?”

  Bassus failed to reply for several long moments, and then the pain seemed to pass. His face relaxed, but the pallor of his cheeks was now gray. “Something you can do, Varro? Not unless you can prevent me from shitting fire and blood daily!”

  Varro was horrified. “That sounds vile. You must see a physician.”

  “I have seen a physician!” the general irritably returned. “I see the fussing fool of a legion physician every morning and every night, and I am sick to death of his damned purgatives and potions. The cure is worse than the ailment, Varro.” He started forward again, slowly, gingerly, and still with an arm around Varro for support. “It will pass,” he said. “A change of diet, a change of air. As soon as I have rounded up the last of the rebels I plan to take myself up to the hot spring near Tiberias. I hear that it has a most rehabilitating affect on the constitution.”

  “I have used that hot spring myself, and I can say that it certainly is stimulating.” Varro was trying to be kind. It was obvious to him that, whatever Bassus was suffering from, a bathe in a hot spring would do little if anything to help.

  “Good, good. Now, what was it we were discussing?” The sentries either side of the entrance to the general’s pavilion stiffened at their commander’s approach. “Come inside, out of the sun, Varro,” Bassus urged.

  As the pair passed into the large tent, two of the general’s servants anxiously rose up from the floor where they had been waiting for their master’s return. Taking Bassus from Varro, they helped him to his camp bed then carefully lay him on his back.

  “There is no position that I find comfortable for long,” the general confessed, as Varro came to stand looking down at him and the servants began to towel the general’s perspiring brow. “I am as happy on my feet as in any other position.”

  “How long have you been suffering like this?”

  “Not long. I live with it, and plow on with the business of soldiering. Mind you, I do find that riding can be an agony at times, which is just a little inconvenient for a soldier. Still, every problem has its solution. I sent down to Caesarea and had the procurator send me up the chariot and pair he was so proud of.”

  “Procurator Rufus sent you his chariot?” Varro suppressed a smile. He knew how enamored his cousin had been with chariots since childhood, and guessed that Rufus had been far from happy to part with his plaything.

  “I drive it myself. It allows me to stand, and makes travel almost tolerable. Now, where were we, Varro? Remind me of what we were talking about.”

  “You were explaining why you let the rebels at the fortress go free.”

  “Of course. While we were building our encirclement, the partisans would send out raiding parties to harass us. One day, a youngster by the name of Eleazar, a member of one of these raiding parties, was captured alive by one of my Egyptian auxiliaries. I tied this Eleazar up on a cross, for all his comrades up in the fortress to see. It eventuated that Eleazar was the son of a leading Jewish family, and the rebels sent envoys down, offering to evacuate the fortress if I returned this Eleazar to them alive. I agreed.”

  I see.

  “It meant that I could take possession of the fortress without losing a man, while the partisans were left to flee into the wilderness. You see, Varro, I knew that the rebels at Masada would rather cut these peoples’ throats than take them in. In my own time, I will track them down, in the open, and I will deal with them once and for all.”

  “A clever strategy.”

  “I thought so. To complicate matters, the people in the town refused to leave, so we continued siege operations, until last night’s fun and games. Of those we intercepted we killed everyone bearing arms, of course. The unarmed and the women and children were put with our existing prisoners.�
��

  “It is the prisoners that interest me, general. Do I have your permission to seek out several Jews among your prisoners?”

  “Help yourself, Varro. Give my camp prefect their names; he’ll rake them up for you if they are here.” Bassus suddenly let out a pain-filled groan. He sat up, as if propelled by an unseen hand, and, doubled over. Clutching his midriff with one hand, he grabbed at a slave with the other. “The medication,” he gasped. “The medication!” Another slave ran to him with small stone bottle. Bassus drank, then, with a twisted face, waited for the potion to go to work. As the pain drained from his face, he slowly eased back down to the supine position. “That’s better,” he sighed, with relief.

  By night, Bassus’ three thousand Jerusalem prisoners, now joined by a similar number of women and children from Macherus, were housed in miserable slave camps on the Macherus perimeter. By day, they were on the road to Jericho, hauling water in clay pots strapped to their backs, like pack animals, watched over and goaded by auxiliary cavalry.

  In the evening of the day on which Varro and his column had linked up with the twelve thousand troops of Bassus’ army, the questor stood at the gate to the largest of the camps for male prisoners, flanked by his deputies and with men of his 4th Scythica Legion detachment drawn up in ranks behind him. Led by centurions, parties of 10th Legion soldiers were moving through the camp with torches held high. Every now and then the centurions would halt among the collection of pathetic shelters formed from clothes and blankets, and call out the names of three men: “Matthias ben Naum, an apothecary of Jerusalem. Baruch bar Laban, a native of Tiberias. Tobias, his son.”

  Varro stood with folded arms, watching and waiting as the centurions repeated the names time and again, hearing them add that a reward awaited these men if they came forward. Varro had promised old Laban bar Nahor that in return for information he would seek his son and grandson among the Jerusalem prisoners, and he was keeping his word, although he held little hope of finding either. But the main focus of Varro’s quest was the apothecary Ben Naum. The escapee Aristarchus had not been apprehended by the search parties. It was anyone’s guess where the Greek scribe was now. Varro had recalled Crispus and his men, but he had left Venerius and a small cavalry detachment out patrolling the Jericho road on the lookout for Aristarchus. In the meantime, the questor was proceeding in the hope that the scribe’s evidence was reliable. Yet, severe doubts now occupied his mind about the very existence of Ben Naum.

  If any of the men the questor was looking for were located, Varro expected that they would be in poor health; all the prisoners appeared to be in a state of physical exhaustion. With that in mind Varro had instructed Diocles the physician to be present. The doctor stood with his assistants in a group to Varro’s right. Now, while he waited for results to be generated in the compound, the questor beckoned Diocles. “A question of a medical nature for you, physician,” he said once Diocles had waddled to his side.

  “If it is in my power to answer, my lord questor,” fat Diocles replied.

  “If a man were to regularly pass blood,” said Varro, “what would be the nature of his complaint?”

  Diocles rubbed his chin, looking like a philosopher contemplating a matter of significant gravity. “It would depend on which of the five orifices of the body provided the outlet for the blood, questor,” he answered, with an air of importance. “In the case in question, are we talking about the mouth, the nose, the ears, the penis, or the anus?”

  “The anus.”

  “The flow is regular, you say? In quantity?”

  “Regular and in quantity, accompanied by a fiery sensation, and with a gripping pain in the abdomen.”

  “Oh, my goodness. We are not talking about yourself, are we, questor?”

  “No, not me. This is a purely hypothetical question.”

  “Ah, well, I am relieved to hear that. Your hypothetical man would in all probability be suffering from a cancerous growth.”

  “A cancer?” Varro nodded slowly. He had feared as much.

  “A cancerous growth in the bowel, I would fancy.”

  “I see. Can it be treated?”

  “Treated, yes. Cured, no. It is a death sentence, questor. A death sentence.”

  Varro reclined beside Bassus in the general’s pretorium. Senior officers and leading freedmen from both camps were arrayed on couches around two dining tables in the large tent. Most were enjoying a sumptuous dinner, but, as Varro noticed, Bassus only nibbled at his food. Varro guessed that Bassus must have realized the cause of his medical condition by now. If Varro’s drunkard of a physician could diagnose the general’s illness from a description of the symptoms, then the physician treating the general would have known what he was dealing with. Besides, Bassus was no fool; even without a doctor’s prognosis he would have known that he was a dying man.

  With a sigh, Varro took up his drinking cup, and looked absently into the diluted wine. Knowledge of Bassus’ awful and terminal illness was enough to depress anyone, but the questor’s own life was not exactly panning out the way he would have liked either. As things stood, his investigation was in jeopardy. The exercise in the prisoners’ camp had proven to be a waste of time. No one answering the name of Ben Naum had come forward. Neither had the son or grandson of old Laban been located; not that they would have been of any assistance to him. When, as a last resort, Varro had sent Gallo back through the camps calling for anyone with information about the death of Jesus of Nazareth four decades before, not a single soul had responded. Figuratively, Varro had reached a river, and, for the life of him, he could not see a way across.

  “Begging the questor’s pardon?”

  Varro looked up from his cup, to see Centurion Gallo standing at the open end of the dining table. “Yes, centurion?”

  The normally taciturn Gallo managed something approaching a smile. “The questor will never believe it,” he said, “but, after we left the prisoners’ camps, several men came forward and identified themselves to the guards.”

  Varro’s spirits instantly rose. “Fortuna smiles at last.”

  “It was the promise of a reward that brought them out from under their rocks, questor,” Gallo remarked with a cynical elevation of the eyes. “You can be sure of that.”

  “Who do we have?” Varro asked with anticipation.

  “Interestingly, questor, we have not one, but three Matthias ben Naums.”

  Before long, three salivating Jewish prisoners stood in front of the dining table, taking in the sea of exotic dishes being served to the Roman officers. One prisoner was elderly, one middle-aged, the third in his twenties. All were well-built, which was why they had been allocated to General Bassus’ slave labor parties. Each was chained to a soldier of the 10th Legion. The officers continued to eat while the prisoners were questioned; to them, this was entertainment.

  “You are all Matthias ben Naum?” Varro asked.

  All three nodded, but none spoke.

  “You all practice as apothecaries, and you are from Jerusalem?”

  Again the prisoners nodded in affirmation.

  “Obviously, Varro,” said Bassus beside him, “two of these men are liars. Or the Jews have a shortage of names and should think about inventing some new ones!”

  This brought a hearty laugh from many of the diners.

  “Either that, or all Jewish apothecaries are named Matthias ben Naum,” said Marcus Marti us, tearing at a pigs trotter, with juice running down his chin.

  There was another gale of laughter around the table.

  All three prisoners were looking extremely uncomfortable. Each had come forward independent of the other, in separate camps, and it had only been when they had been led into the general’s tent that they had learned that were not the only claimant to the name of Matthias ben Naum.

  “That man is too immature to be the one I am looking for,” said Varro, indicating the youngest prisoner, who stood to the left of his two companions. “My man had to be alive and practicing in
Jerusalem forty-one years ago. This man was not even born then. For that matter, the man on right would have only been a babe in arms at that time.”

  “How old are you, Ben Naum on the right?” Bassus demanded.

  “Er, sixty years of age, I think, my lord,” the man answered.

  “Liar!” Bassus snarled. “You would not be a day beyond forty-five.”

  “I look young for my age, my lord,” the man countered.

  “Liar!” Bassus said again. He looked over to the camp prefect of the 10th Legion, who stood by the door. “Have these two imposters crucified at dawn.”

  “No!” the middle-aged man cried as the soldiers of the escort went to haul him away. “I am truly Matthias ben Naum. These other two are the imposters! I swear it!”

  “Wait!” Varro called. “He may be older than he looks, as he says.”

  “Then take the young one away,” Bassus instructed. The youngest of the prisoners was hauled from the tent. Hanging his head in defeat, he went without a word. This left the two older men standing before the officers.

  “How do you propose to test this pair, Varro?” Bassus asked.

  Varro looked over to Diocles at the second dining ‘U.’ “Physician,” he called, “how would you sort the wheat from the chaff here? What question would you ask these men to determine their qualifications as an apothecary?”

  Diocles, who had Callidus beside him to ensure that nothing stronger than water passed his lips all night, thought for a moment, then fixed his eyes on the middle-aged prisoner. “Younger Jew, answer me this,” he began, projecting his voice as if he were a lawyer posing a question in court. “I am conducting a surgical operation to repair an injury caused by a blow to the head. I have made an incision, to separate the flesh from the bone where it is united to the pericranium membrane and to the bone.” The prisoner stared at him, blank faced. “I intend to fill the whole wound with what we physicians call a tent, to expand it, causing as little pain as possible.” Diocles was enjoying being the focus of the attention of everyone in the pavilion. “Along with this tent I will apply a cataplasm. I come to you and ask you to prepare it. Of what would your cataplasm consist?”